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Five Reasons to Optimise Your Website For Mobile

The mobile internet has become essential that it is now impossible for business owners to ignore it.

It is becoming increasingly crucial for businesses to attract smartphone users to their company website, ideally to spend money or book appointments. The key to reaching this goal is to have a website that is perfectly optimised for a mobile device. Have a read of the Mobile Marketing whitepaper from Graphic Mail to find out more on setting yourself up on mobile. Here are five reasons to optimise your website for mobile.

#1 Mobile internet usage is always growing

These stats prove that there is a huge target audience to cater for. In June 2013, a Deloitte study indicated that almost three quarters of British residents own a smartphone and are therefore able to browse the internet wherever they are. Researchers at Microsoft Tag believe that mobile internet usage will overtake desktop internet usage by 2014.

Perhaps more importantly, these millions of mobile internet users are typically happy using their smartphones to buy products online. In fact, marketing analyst company Gartner has predicted that the global m-commerce market will increase by a massive 44 per cent this year.

#2 Customers expect lightning fast mobile websites

The quality of the mobile web is improving all the time. More and more free Wi-Fi hotspots are cropping up, allowing users to wirelessly connect their smartphone to a powerful router. The availability of 3G has improved and the imminent arrival of 4G will ramp up wireless internet speeds even faster.

This is likely to lead to improved expectation of website loading times. Thankfully, mobile-optimised websites are designed to be simpler and therefore load much quicker than its traditional counterparts.

#3 Showrooming

Showrooming is a term used to describe the process of surfing the internet for competitor listings whilst shopping inside a retailer’s store. It’s a practice that is occurring more and more and is worrying plenty of high street shop owners – but if you can’t beat them, join them by getting a website that’s easily accessible.

#4 Mobile Email

There are plenty of retailers who engage in email marketing as is renown for being of the most cost-effective advertising platforms available. The smartphone revolution has affected this market as well though.It has been estimated that more than four out of ten emails are now opened on mobile devices, so it’s probably worthwhile ensuring that any click-throughs direct readers to a page that they can actually read.

#5 Your competitors are probably already doing it

No matter what industry a business is in, it’s always better to be a market leader rather than stuck in the chasing pack. At least two thirds of major retailers have invested in mobile websites to try and boost their online sales.

If you could buy a product from a website that loaded quickly as well as being was easy to read and navigate, would you use it? Or would you opt for a tiny retail site that loads slowly and consistently requires zooming in order to read?

Many businesses have recognised that the mobile web represents the future of online sales. Will yours be one of them?

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About heatherclark

Heather is a serial blogger, writing on many different topics including marketing and business.

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